Thoughts of an activist lawyer

The President as a bully

I could not believe my ears. There he was- the President of the Republic—acting like the head of the Sputnik gang, with apologies to the gang.

Sure, no one likes to lose. But when you want to reconsider a loss, you should argue on the basis of law and reasons- at least if its the highest court that you need to convince. But no, the President threw both reason and law and instead acted like a bully telling the members of the Court that if they do not reverse themselves on the DAP, he will ask the Legislature to remove them from office. He even taunted them to a fight, as if the Justices, because of their sheer physical age, could stand up to him.

And why did he think the Court was wrong on the DAP? He identified at least two points, both of which do not hold water. One, the administrative code purportedly empowers him to realign funds even on a cross-border basis. The problem with this submission is the elementary principle of hierarchy of laws. Even assuming that the administrative code authorizes him to resort the DAP, all laws must still conform to the Constitution, the latter being the supreme law of the land. Those that do not are declared by the courts as null and void ab initio, or without legal effect from the beginning.

Second, he argued that at most, the DAP is akin to parking at a no parking zone in order to bring a dying patient to a hospital. Really? Since when did a culpable breach of the Constitution become akin to a breach of a minor local ordinance? Moreover, the Court identified a major breach of the Constitution as basis for invalidating the DAP; that is, that it usurped the exclusive power of Congress over the purse. The DAP involved more than a violation of an ordinance that could result in a parking ticket. The DAP was about the very essence of representative democracy: that there will be no taxation without representation and its corollary, that there can be no spending of public funds without the consent of the people acting through their representatives. That was the full impact of the ruling of the Supreme Court when it reiterated the doctrine in Demetria vs. Alba that the Executive could only realign savings to augment an existing line item and only within the executive or that branch of government that incurred the saving. To sanction what the DAP purported to do, which was to replace projects identified by Congress with other projects identified by the Executive would infringe on the power of Congress to pass the appropriations law which incidentally, is also an important part of the system of checks and balances institutionalized by the Constitution by having three co-equal branches of government.

Well, we ourselves will file a partial motion for reconsideration but find no need in bullying the Court to accede to our arguments. We will rely on the tried and tested formula of arguing through law and reason.

What are our grounds for reconsideration?

Two points.

First, the Court was not clear how much the executive could augment for existing line appropriation items using savings. On the basis of the Court decision itself, we identified at least three projects that were augmented by at least doubling the amount originally appropriated and even up to 51 times of the appropriated amount. Take for instance the national highway project for the President’s home province of Tarlac. The original budget was P1 billion. This was augmented by P900 million, or almost double the initial amount., This, we will argue, is no longer augmentation but a new budget allocation which again, infringes on the power of the purse that properly pertains to Congress. Similar “augmentations” mentioned in the Court’s decision include a P6 million budget for research and development of the DOST which was augmented 51 times with 300M and the billions and billions by way of augmentation to senatoriables Ging Deles and peace bond queen alias “when we hold on together” Dinky Soliman’s departments.

A second ground for reconsideration is that the lump sump for contingencies and natural calamities should also be declared unconstitutional. This is pursuant to the earlier Belgica decision on PDAF which declared all lumps sums, except for these two items, as being unconstitutional. We will argue that even these two should be declared unconstitutional since the remedy for the executive in case of extraordinary expense is to go to Congress for a supplemental budget. This was done for Yolanda. Why shouldn’t it be done anew for similar unexpected expenses?

In any case, what appeared more troublesome with the President’s desperate effort to defend the patently constitutional infirmed program that is the DAP is the reality that while he has the Constitutional mandate to enforce the Constitution and the laws of the land, he is the first to breach both the Constitution and the laws of the land. And in so breaching his constitutional oath, he resorts to bullying the Judicial branch of government into sustaining his unconstitutional acts. This is troubling because this would have been unthinkable in the administration of both my idols, Ninoy and Cory. The parents must now be turning in their graves with the acts of their unico hijo.

5 comments on “The President as a bully”

You forgot to say that the SC did not only rule that DAP is unconstitutional. It also declared, seemingly without basis, that the proponents are liable for prosecution because there is presumption that good faith was absent.

That left the Executive with no choice but to react in order to avoid prosecution.

If the SC stopped after ruling that DAP is unconstitutional, there won’t be any problem. The problem is SC overstepped, leading to this artificial crisis. Nakakalungkot kasi sa dinami-dami ng problema ng Pinas, dinagdagan pa ito.

Luckily, we have maverick lawyers and reputable people as vanguards of our constitution who can explicitly explain the wrong that was committed by our self-proclaimed righteous, hard headed servant Pnoy and call to attention his childish folly, undeserving of his position as president. “Honor isn’t about making the right choices. It’s about dealing with the consequences.” Thank you Harry for your well-founded analysis and statesmanship. May divine wisdom be with you always.